Ever since Charles Wilkins translated The Bhagavat Gita in English in 1785, this Indian sacred text has been continuously translated, adapted and appropriated by the Western Orientalists as the finest method of what Edward Said called “to domesticate the Orient and thereby turn it into a province of European learning.” (Said 78) This entire enterprise of Orientalism is based on the famous maxim of Michael Foucault called ‘knowledge is power’. The construction of knowledge about India was essential for the subjugation of India. However, Indians creatively used the same tools of colonization, viz. translation, adaptation, interpretation and re-appropriation of The Bhagavat Gita to turn it into the foundational text of anti-colonial Indian nationalism. 

Orientalism, Indian Nationalism, The Bhagavat Gita 2

• • Ahir, D.C. (Ed.) Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: Buddhist Revolution and Counter Revolution in Ancient India. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Co. 1996.

• • Desai, Meghnad. Who Wrote the Bhagavad Gita?: A Secular Inquiry into a Sacred Text. Harper Collins Publishers India. 2014.

• • Devy, G.N. Of Many Heroes: An Indian Essay in Literary Historiography. Mumbai: Orient Longman, 1998.

• • Foucault, Michael. Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-79. Ed. by Colin Gordon. NY: Pantheon Books. 1980.

• • Gandhi, M.K. “Satyagraha Leaflet, No. 18, 8 May 1919”. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Vol. 15. New Delhi: Publications Division. 1958.

• • Gandhi, M.K. “Crusade against Non-co-operation”. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Vol. 18. New Delhi: Publications Division. 1958.

• • Gowda, Nagappa. The Bhagavad Gita in the Nationalist Discourse. Oxford University Press. 2011.

• • Jan Mohamed, Abdul R. “The Economy of Manichean Allegory:

The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature”. Critical Inquiry. Vol. 12: Issue 1, October 1985. 59-87.

• • Jones, William. Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring (1789). Online version prepared by FWP, January 2004.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/shakuntalajones/

• • Kejriwal, O.P. The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past 1784-1838. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1988. • • Kothari, Rita. Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English. New York: Routledge. 2003.

• • Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient. Pantheon Books, 1978.

• • Tilak, B. G. Gita Rahasya. Trans. B.S. Sukathankar. 2 vols. Bombay: Vaibhav Press. 1935.

• • Wilkins, Charles. The Bhagavat-Geeta or Dialogues of Krishna and Arjun. London: C. Nourse. 1785.